Drug discovery often involves laborious biological testing of candidate compounds by, for example, exposing them to samples of tissue that exhibit the disorder to be treated. For example, in screening candidate compounds for efficacy against atherosclerosis, it is common to subject cultured endothelial cells to shear stress, which affects the growth and behavior of adherent cultured cells. For example, the applied shear stress can mimic circulatory conditions encountered by the cells in vivo. In a conventional “single-well” system, a single motor-cone assembly is arranged in a single-well plate with cultured endothelial cells and is actuated to impart a shear-stress pattern to the cells. One disadvantage of this approach is that the time required to screen compounds may be impractically long; since each shear condition to be studied typically requires replicates (i.e., multiple tests for each shear condition), a multiplicity of shear conditions is generally required to carry out high-throughput screening in a meaningful manner, and multiple compounds/reagents under investigation must be investigated serially.
Accordingly, a need exists for a high-throughput flow system and for related methods of performing biological screening.